[SeattleUte]

I picked up Blood Meridian after reading reviews of McCarthy's new book, No Couintry for Old Men, in the New Yorker and the New York Times. The New Yorker article was mostly about Blood Meridian, and very fawning (nobody seems to think the new one is that good, but I'll read it). Ten years ago Harold Bloom said it's the best novel by any living American author. I like the book, but I have to think about that one. McCarthy's from the south and his characters are southerners, so he can write in a southern dialect, and have his characters speak that way. That's always effective--e.g., Huckleberry Finn, Catcher In the Rye, Fulkner, and that novel that won the Booker Prize last year. But it doesn't seem to work in any other context.